Welcome readers, to another Kill Team review from Goonhammer! The auxiliary aliens of the T’au Empire have been hogging the release spotlight for the Greater Good for a while now, but with the release of Dead Silence its time for the galaxy's shooty-est blue-est aliens to emerge from the shadows and take center stage with the new XV26 Stealth Suits Kill Team.
Despite the impressive firepower, the Stealth Suits Team isn’t for those who want to charge into the enemy, chainswords revving and guns blazing. Try that, and you’re very likely to meet a swift and embarrassing defeat. Instead, piloting this team is akin to being a predator in the shadows, waiting just out of reach until the perfect moment to strike. Wait out your opponent, bait them to come to you, and the team can bring its frightening offensive output to bear before disappearing into thin air. Stealth Suits reward careful positioning and playing keep-away, with tools to both confound enemy attempts to get clean shots at your operatives, as well as bail them out of a fight should they get cornered.
Before we dive in, we’d like to thank Games Workshop for providing a preview copy of these rules for review purposes.
If you’d prefer a video of the review, check out this review from Can You Roll a Crit? below.
-LY
XV26 Stealth Suits
Five advanced XV26 Stealth Suits backed up by a pair of MV15 Drones (not MV1 and MV4 for the nerds amongst you).XV26 Stealth Suit teams use Infiltration and Recon archetypes which look to be fairly strong, as the team's tools incentivize you to play keep away, leaving you time and action points to score those tac op points.
Abilities
XV26 Stealth Battlesuit. Credit: Greg Chiasson
Stealth Fields
Both stealth field rules key off of your operatives being on conceal orders, and both are quite powerful. The first is turning off visibility for your operatives if opponents are more than 3” away from you. Secondary benefit is a 1 AP cheaper fall back action. Both of these let operatives remain elusive, and when Ghostshroud’ing to flip back to conceal orders I can imagine opponents feeling very frustrated.
Kauyon
Friendly operatives gain Accurate X, all the way up to 3. The value of "X" is calculated on a table and is based on your target's location, starting at Accurate 1 within 3” of your territory, going up to Accurate 2 within your territory, and capping at Accurate 3 within 3” of your drop zone. Basically, if you can lure opponents into your territory you can pretend to roll dice when performing shoot actions. When paired with your leader's ability those late game fusion guns are going to atomize with startling regularity.
Swiftblade: I think Stealth Fields and Kauyon are slam dunk mechanics. They manage to be clearly powerful rules, but also very narrow in their application. Getting the most out of Kauyon requires letting your opponent get in close, which in most cases a clever opponent would just ignore by staying away, but Stealth Fields force the issue if they want any chance of getting points for the Kill Op. While the siren song of Accurate 3 Fusion Guns is extremely tempting, I think opponents are going to stay out of its required range as much as possible, but Accurate 2 shots for being within your territory is very achievable, and still strong.
There’s a noticeable lack of double shooting abilities here, which is one of the team’s biggest weaknesses. It’s going to make Goremongers an absolute nightmare matchup, and will make the team susceptible to being overwhelmed by horde teams who close the distance quickly. You have some tools to mitigate this, but Stealth Suit players will run the risk of cornering themselves if they retreat if they aren't careful.
The Operatives
The team has two main operative types to keep in mind. Our five Stealth Suits are effectively Marines with 3APL, 6” movement, 3+ saves, 12 wounds, that hit on 4s. There's a maximum of two fusion guns allowed across those five battlesuits. The drones on the other hand are 2APL, 6” movement, 4+ saves, 7 wounds, and they come with limitations on a whole host of things; but you mainly keep them around for their utility activations. We’ll talk about melee here as well, as it's pretty forgettable team wide: three attacks, on 4s, for 3/4 damage on stealth suits, and three attacks, on 5s, for 2/3 damage on drones. The goal is to avoid melee at all costs.
XV26 Stealth Battlesuit Infiltrator
Our mook operative, which we can absolutely skip over. However, its Covert Protocols ability lets the operative counteract on conceal orders, while only allowing pick up/place marker actions and mission actions. You’ve got the option of either weapon with both the burst cannons and fusion blasters hitting on 4s. Burst Cannon (focused) follows a similar song and dance as other rapid firing weapons with five attacks, on 4s, 3-4 damage, and Ceaseless. Paired with the burst cannon (sweeping) profile with four attacks and torrent 1” with everything else the same. Meanwhile the really juicy stuff is on the fusion guns, which have a short range profile that is the melta-equivalent. At 6”, the short range has four attacks, hitting on 4s, 6/3 damage, with pierce 2 and devastating 4. At the 12”, the long range has four attacks, hitting on 4s, 4/5 damage, and pierce 1.
Credit: HappyRacoon
XV26 Stealth Battlesuit Designator
Our shooting assistant operative with the same weapon profiles as all our other battlesuit operatives. Compared to the markerlights of the Pathfinder faction ability, the Designator's ability feels much tamer. The Markerlight ability is found here and on the MV15 Marker Drone, and provides the Severe rule to friendly operatives' ranged weapons as long as enemy operatives are valid targets to the markerlighting operative. Additionally enemy operatives can be visible to markerlighting operatives, and within 2” of an ambush marker, which we’ll talk about in ploys. Overall a solid enough support piece, but with duplicated rules on the marker drone this operative does feel a little vanilla.
Credit: HappyRacoon
XV26 Stealth Battlesuit Liberator
Liberating opponents through the power of explosives, the Liberator comes with one of the more expansive Grenadier rules covering frag, krak, stun and smoke grenades along with that juicy +1 to hit on the explosives. Additionally we get a new one-use EMP Bomb, a five attack variant of the Pathfinder’s old emp grenade, with a 4” range that hits on 3s, for 2/2 damage, Devastating 1, Lethal 4+, and Saturate; this is only crippled by the inclusion of the Heavy (reposition only) rule. We’re expecting that the Liberator will stick to throwing Accurate 2 krak grenades with balanced, but time will tell!
Credit: CanYouRollaCrit?
XV26 Stealth Battlesuit Lodestar
See those Electrochaff Launchers on the backpack of the Lodestar? Your shooting focused opponents are going to come to hate them, since they provide a once a turning point ability to “smoke grenade” a friendly visible operative within 3” of the Lodestar, and more than 2” from the enemy. Granted, the ignores-piercing and obscurity effects only last for the singular action, but on demand smokes are pretty effective, especially if the Liberator is liberally applying smoke to the battlefield. The Homing Beacon Marker can be picked up, and if an opponent ever does that, the marker is removed from the game. They’ll be incentivized to do that since you always get an extra CP as long as it's in the killzone, with a chance to generate an additional CP based on how far up the board the marker is. This ability basically makes the Lodestar a must take, as we are very CP hungry!
Swiftblade: Even after the nerf to smoke grenades, the Lodestar is a vital piece for just totally shutting down your opponent's shooting. Even if you still have to worry about Piercing 1 weapons, combining electrochaff launchers with Holowave Countermeasures (a strategy ploy we will touch on later) can completely stunt your opponent's ability to meaningfully shoot your Stealth Suits from long range.
Credit: HappyRacoon
XV26 Stealth Battlesuit Neutraliser
As we’ve seen from the Brood Brother’s Magus, infinite range stun on conceal orders is a very powerful rule, and the System Jam will probably do a good job of gumming up opponents plans. For those of you who don’t know what that does, you pick an operative visible to the Neutraliser to give -1APL for 1AP on engage or 2AP on conceal! Backed up by the Multispectrum Sensor Package ability, which is a once a turning point ability that activates when an opposing operative is activated within 8” and visible to the Neutraliser. All friendly operatives within 3” (or 6” with a comms device) of the Neutraliser can dash or change their order but cannot end that dash within 3” of an opposing operative. Between this and the Vectored Retro-Thrusters firefight ploy it should be exceedingly difficult to pin down these XV26 Battlesuits. This is another one of those operatives that seems like a must take, and even one that seems great with a fusion blaster.
Credit: CanYouRollaCrit?
XV26 Stealth Battlesuit Shas’vre
Our must-take leader with 13 wounds and two very potent abilities. In terms of melee prowess the Shas’vre comes with a pulse pistol that honestly won’t be shot all that often with its 8” range, four attacks, on 4s, and 4/5 damage. It does come with a (point-blank) profile in melee range with 3 attacks, on 4s, 4/5 damage, and Accurate 1, giving you a few rare opportunities to perform the vaunted charge, fight, and shoot sequence that 3APL operatives often use on this melee-poor team.
We’re really here for the pair of abilities in XV26 Drone Controller and For the Greater Good. The first is a strategic gambit that removes the action restrictions bullet point and APL penalty bullet point for a singular drone until the end of its next activation. Meanwhile, For the Greater Good allows you to treat Accurate X granted from Kauyon as Accurate X+1, to a cap of 3, if two friendly battlesuits have been incapacitated.
Swiftblade: This is the best offensive piece on the team, and shouldn’t leave home without their handy Fusion Gun. Keep them waiting in the wings to buff up your Drones until late in the game, and after some losses they can swoop in and clean up shop with easy access to Accurate 3.
XV26 Stealth Battlesuit. Credit: Greg Chiasson
MV15 Gun Drone
Everything said about this Drone goes for the Marker Drone as well. Both of them come with 5 bullet points, with the first restricting what actions the drone is allowed to take and the second informing that the drones are 1APL for controlling objects. The other points are restrictions to only weapons on the datacard, determining visibility from the rim of the Drones, and removing the Drones from mattering for kill op purposes. Notably the last point does not have the existing expendable wording that relates to tac ops and only cares about kill op.
The upgrade from MV4 to MV15 has upgraded the operative with a Photon Grenade (1AP) ability, which is a 3+ chance to cause an opposing visible operative to lose 2” from its move stat. Along with the standard twin pulse carbine profile of 4 attacks, on 4s, with 4/5 damage and Ceaseless.
Swiftblade: You could potentially use the Shas’vre’s Drone Controller ability to allow the Gun Drone to toss Stun Grenades out, and while I don’t know how often you’ll get the chance to pull off a Photon Grenade/Stun Grenade wombo combo on a key operative, it does seem like a great way to make your opponent apoplectically mad which is very funny.
MV15 Marker Drone
Same bullet point stuff, and even same markerlight stuff as the Designator, this operative seems very much the intended target of the Shas’vre’s Drone ability, unlocking your bait that does mission actions and lures opposing operatives into an ambush marker.
Strategic Ploys
Patient Hunters
Whenever fighting, retaliating, or shooting against expended enemy operatives, all your weapons gain Balanced and your ranged weapons gain Saturate. It's hard to imagine any elite operatives standing much of a chance if your Fusion Blasters are letting loose with Balanced, Accurate 2, and Saturate. However, you will need to remain patient to get those lines to open up.
Bonds of Unity
Whenever a friendly non-Drone operative is activated within 6” and visible to a friendly non-Drone operative, you can ignore APL changes to the activating operative, along with one part of the injury effect -- either the movement penalty or the hit stat penalty. With only five really important operatives, this will probably be in the conversation turns 3 and 4.
Prepare Ambush
Place an ambush token that lasts the turning point wholly within your territory and more than 2” away from opposing operatives. When a friendly operative is shooting an enemy within 2” of the ambush marker, you may have them gain the Seek weapon rule, and then remove the marker. Since your markerlight abilities key off this token, there are solid reasons to not burn the Seek early, but straight up Seek is juicy. Place it anywhere you don’t want opponents to go, or use it to screen out good staging points.
Holowave Countermeasures
Enemies that shoot at friendly operatives more than 6” away from them, automatically discard a success at the end of the roll attack step. This effect is not cumulative with obscurity, but if you’re able to play keep away it'll keep you very healthy. Probably a strong choice against shooting-centric opponents, and not useful against melee opponents.
Credit: NotThatHenryC
Firefight Ploys
Vectored Retro-Thrusters
Use when an enemy operative's Charge action ends within control range of a non-Drone friendly operative. Interrupt that action and perform a Fall Back action that cannot move more than 3”, followed by your opponent then using any leftover charge distance on a Reposition action. I suspect you’ll be budgeting for this each turn as this leaves melee focused opponents in the lurch.
Swiftblade: Keep an eye out for any abilities your opponent might have to prevent Fall Back actions, like Chain Snares, since that can really spoil your get out of jail free card.
Ghostshroud
Each operative can only use this once per battle, so you’ll have 4 windows of opportunity. At the end of a friendly activation, you can flip from engage orders to conceal orders. Another incredible utility ploy, letting you pepper away with burst cannons or slag an isolated target and remain perfectly safe.
Swiftblade: Considering that you’re operatives are all fast and don’t count as visible outside of 3” while on conceal, Ghostshroud is an outstanding tool for punishing your opponents positioning. I wouldn’t be surprised if this gets used 3 times in almost every game with Stealth Suits.
Engage Jet Pack
During a friendly activation or counteract, you can ignore the vertical distances of one climb, and one drop. Not quite fly, and not quite as strong as the howling banshees acrobatics. However, you’ll know when you need it, and getting a Fusion Blaster on point on demand remains priceless.
Savior Protocols
During a shoot action against a friendly non-Drone operative, a Drone operative within 3” can become the target of the shooting action instead so long as the shot isn’t a Blast or Torrent weapon. This will be useful, but on such a small team it may be hard to keep your Drones in range of your stealth suit operatives.
Equipment
XV26 Multitrackers
One per turn when using the sweeping profile for a Burst Cannon, you can use torrent 2” instead of 1”. Reasonably effective against wide teams, but useless otherwise.
Counter-Network Jammers
Whenever a singular non-Drone friendly is contesting against exactly two enemy operatives, treat the opposing enemy APL total as one lower. This lets a singular 3APL operatives tie against a pair of 2APL operatives, which seems fairly narrow. It does allow you to hold your own against those hordes, but GW has released fewer hordes this edition.
Advanced Blacksun Filters
When shooting against obscured targets, you do not have successes automagically discarded. Any other effects from the obscurity still apply. Excellent, team wide, and really forces opponents to stay honest against those five attacks from burst cannons.
Swiftblade: What have my sweet, innocent Nemesis Claw lads done to anyone to deserve this.
Hardwired Target Locks
Everyone can counteract! And they must flip from conceal to engage to do so! Notably you have to be further than 3” from all opposing operatives to do this, and you can only perform a Shoot action. However it keeps all your operatives frosty against hordes, and out activations will keep opponents honest. I think this will be an auto take enough of the time and expect it to be strong.
Credit: Warhammer Community
Masters of the Patient Hunter
From a strategic perspective the Stealth Suits are a patient team lying in wait to allow opponents into the waiting jaws of their faction ability and defensive tac ops. Between our designator, and vectored retro-thrusters we’re very much incentivized to lay out a little bait around the midline. If opponents are too afraid to interact with our lone Marker Drone on the center objective, we can use the leader's gambit to put some scoring pressure on an opponent while laying in wait. Outside of our tac ops we have photon grenades, and the Designator’s signal jam to force your opponents to feel some movement pressure, while only laying out less important pieces. This leaves room for the Designator’s free dash and vectored retro-thrusters to leave aggressive opponents in lurch. That's when the 3APL fusion guns can take their obscured shots and fade back into obscurity. Overall I’d expect to play a fairly far back plan that is defensive for turn 2, then spring the jaws of the trap for turns 3 and 4.
How’s the Team Look?
HappyRaccoon: I’m honestly so very excited to play some more elite-centric T'au. As a big fan of the original pathfinder team, and a relatively mid-rangey player, they look great! A pair of Accurate 2 fusion blasters is going to be a tough pill for any elite opponent to face down, and when you’re backed up with on demand “fly” it seems hard to avoid. They do look like they’ll have some potential struggles into wider teams, but that remains to be seen. I can definitely imagine an obnoxious world where they exist constantly 9” away from all forward threats, relying on the -1APL, dash backs, and photon grenades to create virtual space. Leaving opponents unable to engage and allowing mark enemy movements or track targets to ruin opponents. Regardless very excited, and personally chuffed with my paint job.
XV26 Stealth Battlesuit. Credit: Greg Chiasson
Swiftblade: I’m impressed with how the Design Team managed to make a team with such a clear and interesting playstyle here. At this point, this review has used the phrase “patient hunter” enough for it to lose all meaning, there really isn’t a better way to describe the teams core concept. Stealth Suits really sell the feeling of playing the patient hunter, with huge payoffs for anyone who waits until the perfect moment to strike.
As for where this team will fall on the greater power curve of the Kill Team meta, I think its going to be a strong team who’s defined by hard counters. On the one hand, this team seems like a nightmare for elite teams, particularly Astartes, where Stealth Suits abilities to hang out of reach and deliver some of the nastiest single shooting the game has to offer can really shine. But Stealth Suits seem like they’ll run the risk of being overrun by fast, melee horde teams like Fellgor and Goremongers, and will need to play extremely cagey to avoid getting bogged down. I think playing Stealth Suits will be like turning every game of Kill Team into rock-paper-scissors, but you’re only allowed to bring scissors. Which rules when you get paired into paper, and its not too bad if you get paired into scissors, but absolutely horrible if you play into rock. Still, I think the team will be fun to play, and hey, some sickos out there love trying to win those impossible matchups.
Have any questions or feedback? Drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com. Want articles like this linked in your inbox every Monday morning? Sign up for our newsletter. And don’t forget that you can support us on Patreon for backer rewards like early video content, Administratum access, an ad-free experience on our website and more.
This website uses cookies. Learn more.
XV26 Stealth Battlesuit. Credit: Greg Chiasson
Credit: HappyRacoon
Credit: HappyRacoon
Credit: CanYouRollaCrit?
Credit: HappyRacoon
Credit: CanYouRollaCrit?
XV26 Stealth Battlesuit. Credit: Greg Chiasson
Credit: NotThatHenryC
Credit: Warhammer Community
XV26 Stealth Battlesuit. Credit: Greg Chiasson
Goonhammer Hobby Round-Up: March 2026
Goonhammer Reviews: Tribal Conquest
Conquest: Weaver Courts Gemred Knights and Scaile Dancers Model Review
